It's A Wonderful Life II: Robert Romano
by Lin M
Summary: Robert Romano's remake of the film. Same place, same cast as Mark's remake of the film. Yes, "Freefall" aired in the UK a couple of days ago. How could you tell?


It's A Wonderful Life Vol II: Robert Romano  
  
The screaming roar of twisting metal hitting concrete and exploding died away: then its echoes died away; then the resounding silence that followed also died away.  
  
Robert Romano remembered the falling helicopter, his own inability to run, and drew the obvious conclusion. He smacked his right fist into his left palm with rage, then looked down. It was there. His arm was there. It didn't hurt. He could feel it, but it didn't hurt. He stretched it out. He elbow bent. His wrist flexed. He could touch his fingers to his thumb. He had a fully working left arm just when he didn't need it any longer. Son of a bitch.  
  
There was only one place to go, and that was through distinctly unpearly doors into a large atrium. He flung them open with both arms, and stomped through. Far, far above was a glass roof, down through which shone the last gleam of an early winter sun. Around the sides were glass walls, barely visible behind the originals of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. From his point of view, there was no way to tell how large the rest of the place was.  
  
Inside it he was going to find some answers.  
  
A marble floor stretched far ahead to a fountain that jetted a hundred feet into the air and made the atmosphere pleasantly cool. It was fed by, or fed into, a narrow but deep channel that crossed the atrium.  
  
An old fat bored guy in tacky corporate work-wear and a name-tag saying Stan beckoned him over to Reception. His companion Hilda simpered up at him. Romano ignored her.  
  
"Name?" grunted Stan.  
  
"Robert Romano," he snapped. He knew the drill. Catholic school was thorough. This was the after-life. It wasn't as though they didn't know he was coming. Fall of every sparrow, blah blah cupcakes. Old fat bored Stan riffled through the appointments book and punched a number into a hands- free telephone. "Caroline? He's here." Stan went back to studying the racing form.  
  
Even that mean fat bastard Frank who'd tricked him into harm's way less than five minutes ago was less insolent. He could feel the blood pounding in his head. "That's your job? I don't even get told to take a seat in chairs?"  
  
"Stan luv," reproved Hilda. "Poor man's been in an accident, you could show some sympathy."  
  
"No need to take it out on me," grumbled Stan.  
  
Romano really didn't have time for a domestic squabble. "Look, do I get a seat or not?"  
  
"This way", said a thin woman name-tagged Sharon who had just materialised at his elbow. She stood aside and held out her left arm to direct him over the channel of flowing water into a smart cubicle behind the glass wall.  
  
It was empty.  
  
There should have been at least eight other people. "Where's the others?"  
  
"Excuse me?" said Sharon nervously.  
  
"From the accident. In Chicago, This afternoon. The one with the helicopter", he spelled out. "The one that killed me. Where are they now?"  
  
"I'm not at liberty to divulge that information," said Sharon, and vanished.  
  
Romano was left digesting the unwelcome information that apparently Heaven was also staffed by retards.  
  
=================  
  
Upstairs, Caroline was staring at the receiver she had replaced a few minutes before. She glanced over at the empty desk at whose occupant's right hand she sat. Geoffrey was expecting her to deal with this.  
  
Normally the youngsters like Damien dealt with new arrivals, and conducted their Viewings, but right now Damien was busy. A lot of people had died in that crash, and besides, Robert Romano was different.  
  
So she stood up, put on the divine jacket that Elsa had just made for her, and went to take the lift down to Reception.  
  
=================  
  
Romano glared out through gaps in the foliage of the industrial-sized ferns across the atrium His own gardener could do a better job of pruning, and a truck had run over his head.  
  
Hilda wandered over. "Tea?" she asked. She held out a cup and saucer. "It's in the nice china."  
  
Romano brushed her offer aside. "How long are you planning on keeping me here?"  
  
"Not much longer," said a second female voice from another doorway. Romano turned and saw a blonde. Impeccable make-up and hair, designer outfit, but too old to pull off the high-class escort act anymore. Too old by about a decade, he judged. And too flat. She could have sprung for some implants when she was on top of her game. Or her clients.  
  
"Don't tell me you're in charge," said Romano.  
  
"Geoffrey plays golf on Thursdays," said Caroline. It wasn't an apology.  
  
Caroline waited for Romano to draw the obvious conclusion about Geoffrey's identity. She didn't have to wait long, as most doctors are fairly bright.  
  
"Golf?" he asked. "Golf?"  
  
Caroline remained impassive. She did not believe in justifying the ways of Geoffrey to man.  
  
"Doesn't He have a universe to run or something?"  
  
Caroline did not point out that the universe mostly ran itself, what with gravity and free will.  
  
"What is wrong with you people?"  
  
"Dr Romano," said Caroline carefully, "we are not on trial."  
  
They glared at each other for a few moments. Caroline smiled professionally. "Please follow me."  
  
She stalked surprisingly fast towards a glass elevator that went up as far as the roof, where a winter sunset was happening in particularly fetching rose and magenta shades. It descended an equal distance, to pits of magma that were happening in distinctly less fetching vermilion and crimson.  
  
Romano refused to allow himself to be harried. He could see he was being dealt a hand here, and he was not going to throw it away. He was determined to become a player. Besides, with that tight skirt and those heels, her ass wasn't so bad, for a hooker her age.  
  
Caroline waited for him at the elevator door. A less preoccupied man might have noticed that her smile had become fixed, and wondered whether the inhabitants of the after-life enjoyed telepathy.  
  
"Now what?" he demanded.  
  
She pressed a button to open the door, and waved a hand to usher him in. He stood outside. She reached out, grasped his good elbow with unexpected force, and pulled him in.  
  
"This might be a surprise to you, but we are going to your Viewing. That is, a screening of the whole of your life. On your own DVD. "  
  
He nodded, unimpressed. So the recording angel had caught up with technology, big whup.  
  
"There is, of course, a slight difference from the way you remember your life," she continued. "What you will see is a version of your life as it would have been had you not existed."  
  
Romano tried to grasp this. His life without him in it? That made no sense. How could he go to his final reward without evidence of his life's work?  
  
"The idea is," explained Caroline as she pressed 'up', "that together we review your life, and your life choices, see what difference you made to other people, and then ..."  
  
Romano could hardly believe his ears. Not only was he being fobbed off with a has-been hooker who could not possibly be a decision-maker in the after-life, but she was trying to drag him down into the kind of touchy- feely crap practised by doctors who were not bright enough to be dermatologists. There would probably be a group hug at the end of it. He made his decision. He knew what his life had meant to people, and he was damned if he was going to be made a fool of by watching his life with him taken out.  
  
"Skip it", said Romano.  
  
Caroline looked at him.  
  
"I know what's on it," snapped Romano.  
  
Caroline nodded. They all knew what was on it.  
  
"In that case ..." she murmured. She pressed "cancel", and then "down," and stepped out .  
  
"What the -" yelled Romano. The elevator doors swished shut, cutting him off. For two seconds, Caroline watched him banging on the glass elevator like a bug in a specimen bottle.  
  
Then the lift began its unstoppable descent.  
  
For the second time that day, Robert Romano screamed, "NOOOOOOOO!!!"  
  
====================  
  
As the elevator whisked Romano out of sight, Hilda wandered over. "Tea?" she asked. "It's in the nice china."  
  
"Thank you, Hilda," said Caroline, taking the cup and saucer. She materialised a Hob-Nob to dunk in the tea. "Don't mind if I do."  
  
==================== 


End file.
